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COMPLEX GEOMETRY
but there are really interesting things that
come as a function of that.”
Voxel combines the words volume and
pixel to describe the smallest unit of a 3D
digital object.
THE ADDITIVE EQUATION
There are also significant questions to be
answered about the economics of additive.
A smart article in Defense AT&L maga-
zine in December 2016, “Getting AM Up
to Speed,” lays out issues of speed versus
cost in additive. The author, Stacey L.
Clarke, then-deputy director of systems
engineering for RDECOM at Aberdeen
Proving Ground, Maryland, shows the
tension between speed and cost.
When time is the driver, cost is less of a
factor. When cost and manufacturing
reproducibility—both major concerns
in Army acquisition—are primary driv-
ers, things slow down. When is it worth
spending $5,000 on a product to get it
now rather than waiting six months for
a product that costs only $500? “That’s
a question that probably needs to have
an equation,” Clarke said in an interview
with Army AL&T. There are other vari-
ables to add to that equation, such as how
critical the need is or what else might be
dependent on the product.
That equation might also need to take into
account such variables as the speed with
which developments are being made in the
discipline. Another significant variable is
where the Army puts its money. For the
most part, the Army is focusing its efforts
on its modernization priorities, and it will
be up to industry and academia to develop
the breakthrough technologies.
The Army’s focus is what additive can do
today. “We as scientists and engineers can
talk about material properties and print
bed temperatures and print heads and all
this kind of stuff, but the senior leader-
ship is looking at, ‘So what? How does
this technology improve readiness? How
can I keep systems and Soldiers ready to
go?’ And that’s what we’re learning,” said
Tim Phillis, expeditionary additive manu-
facturing project officer for RDECOM’s
Armament Research, Development Engi-
neering Center’s Rapid Fabrication via
Additive Manufacturing on the Battlefield
(R-FA B). R-FAB is essentially an additive
manufacturing facility in a 20-foot ship-
ping container.
“There are lots of areas that the Army is
looking into, and DOD and other organi-
zations are looking into, for 3D printing,”
said Dr. Aura Gimm. At the time Army
AL&T interviewed her, she managed the
Army’s university-affiliated research center
program at the Institute for Soldier Nano-
technologies at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, which recently produced
4D (the extra dimension is motion) flex-
ible robots via additive. “It’s one thing to
create decorative parts, but it’s something
else if you’re trying to create a load-
bearing or actuating parts that could fail,”
Gimm said.
The vast majority of the objects created
with additive, Gimm said, are essentially
decorative. A plastic-polymer mockup of
a gear-shifting mechanism for a car design
or a reproduction of a missing drawer
pull may be nice to have, but the Army
requires much more out of the military-
specification articles it procures.
Some, though, like Humvee gas caps and
the junctional tourniquet created by the
Army Rapid Equipping Force’s (REF)
Expeditionary Lab (Ex Lab), are not a
great deal more substantial in terms of
their physical structure, but are consider-
ably more useful than decorations.
However, the point that Gimm made is
something that Army scientists and engi-
neers have to keep in mind: Items made for
the operational Army have to withstand
considerable stresses. “The standardization
and making sure that we have metrology
or the metrics to test and evaluate these
parts,” Gimm continued, “ is going to be
quite critical, for [items made with addi-
tive] to be actually deployable in the field.
Because one thing that we don’t want is to
have these parts ... not work as expected.”
That’s something that Perconti empha-
sized in his remarks at the opening of
the AMMP Center. “Ultimately, the goal
for us is to enable qualified components
that are indistinguishable from those they
replace. Remember, when you take a part
out of a weapon system and replace it with
an additive manufactured part, you’re
putting lives on the line if that part is not
fully capable. So we have to be very sure
that whatever we do, we understand the
science, we understand the manufacturing,
and we understand that we are delivering
qualified parts for our warfighters.”
There is much the Army needs: materials
developed for additive, and the design
tools necessary to both limit the inherent
possibilities and exploit them.
80
Army AL&T Magazine
January-March 2019